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| - The EU's former Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier, who is tipped as a possible contender for French president, has said he will announce in the autumn whether he will stand in next year's election. In an interview with French news weekly Le Point published late Wednesday, the conservative politician who won admiration throughout Europe for his deft handling of the difficult Brexit talks hinted he was interested in France's top job. "I'm convinced that we need to restore calm to France," he said. Touting his long experience in the halls of power both in France and Brussels, he said his skills "could be useful to put our country back on the straight and narrow". He also gave a flavour of the themes on which he would campaign, saying he would champion "French ambition and uniting the country". Barnier's name has been circulating for months as a possible unifying figure to lead the fractured French right into the election, in which President Emmanuel Macron, a centrist, is widely expected to seek a second term. Polls show the election likely to come down to another second-round duel between Macron and far-right leader Marine Le Pen, whom Macron defeated in the final of the 2017 race. But they also show that a candidate from the mainstream right could cause an upset. If he did decide to run, Barnier could face strong competition in what is shaping up to be a crowded field on the right. Xavier Bertrand, a former labour minister who currently heads the northern Hauts-de-France region, is currently the conservative favourite to take the fight to Macron and far-right leader Marine Le Pen. Bertrand has already thrown his hat in the ring. Analysts say that while the patrician Barnier has been hailed for his skills as a statesman for persevering through four years of strenuous Brexit talks he could struggle to connect with working-class voters. In his interview with Le Point, the former EU commissioner for the internal market who has held several ministerial portfolios in France denied he was an out-of-touch bureaucrat, saying he had spent "much more time on the ground than in Brussels". He criticised Macron's leadership style, saying that while he was "an intelligent person" his approach to power was "too solitary" and bordered on "arrogance". The interview with Le Point came ahead of the publication on May 6 of his account of the Brexit negotiations, titled "La Grande Illusion" (The Great Illusion). cg/cb/jh/jv
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